Caitlin Kittredge - The Iron Thorn

I wadded up my jacket and tossed it into the far corner, trying to erase the smell of Dunwich Lane, and then I got out a pencil and an exercise book from under my pillow and started doing math problems for Structural Engineering. Far from busywork, numbers are solid and steady. Numbers keep the mind orderly. An orderly mind can’t fall into madness, become consumed by its dreams, get sick on the fantastic and improbable nations that only the mad can visit.

At least, I’d been telling myself that since my mother was committed. Since I was eight years old. Eight years is a long time to lie, even to yourself.

Interrupted by a scratching at the door, I snapped my head up. The chronometer on my desk, with its whirring gears and swinging weights, read half-nine. I’d fallen into a fugue over the page. “Celia, did you forget your key again?” I called. Cecelia was famous for losing everything from sheet music to hairpins.

Instead of an answer, the mellowed corner of a vellum envelope appeared under the door, and a quick clattering of feet ran away down the corridor. I plucked up the letter, saw the address in proper square handwriting:

Miss Aoife Grayson, School of Engines, Lovecraft, Massachusetts

The envelope was charred at one edge, smeared and shiny with dirt, the ink blotted like a bloodstain. It looked like something that had come a long way.

My heart froze. I ripped the door open and looked out into the corridor, my blood roaring.

There was no one. Dusty and dim as always, the dormitory was silent save for snatches of a variety show coming from down the hall. The studio audience laughed over the aether when the host asked, “What’s the difference between a nightjar and my girlfriend?”

Just as quickly, I shut the door and bolted it behind me. The letter lay on the bed, poisonous as a widow spider. The handwriting was as unmistakable as it was unremarkable.

Before I could open the envelope, the door rattled again. “Aoife? Aoife, open this door at once.”

Mrs. Fortune. Of all the rotten times. I shoved the letter under my pillow. Mrs. Fortune was as kind and understanding as any house head could be, but seeing that letter would stretch even her goodwill.

“Aoife!” The bolt rattled again. “If you’re smoking cigarettes or drinking liquor in there …”

I quickly shed my school tie, undid a few collar buttons and turned the taps in the corner sink on full. I didn’t need to muss my hair—the dark unruly strands stood out and frizzed up on their own. I unbolted the door. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fortune. I was washing up.”

Her face relaxed, and she stepped inside. “That’s all right, dear. I’ll keep this brief. I was going to tell you at supper, but …”

I lowered my head and hoped I looked appropriately guilty. Really, I was just praying Don’t look at the bed .

“Aoife, there’s no easy way to tell you this,” Mrs. Fortune said, crossing her broad arms under her equally broad bosom. “The Headmaster requires your presence on Tuesday, after supper, for a meeting about your future here.”

I kept my expression blank, though inside everything lurched. If you want a course on keeping your face composed, become a city ward and go through a few strict homes where the nuns smack your hand or mouth for the slightest snicker or frown. “I don’t understand,” I said, though I did. I was keeping up the order, the routine and sameness that kept truth at bay. Mostly. Not now, with the letter burning a hole in my mattress.

“Aoife, you’re not unintelligent,” said Mrs. Fortune. “For a girl to be accepted into the School of Engines at all is a feat. Don’t disgrace yourself by playing dumb.”

“I don’t understand,” I repeated, softly and innocently. My voice broke and I hated myself for it. “My birthday isn’t for another month.”

“Yes, and on that day, if we are to look at things historically, certain … events may occur,” said Mrs. Fortune. “Your mother began to show signs at sixteen, although sadly I understand we don’t know when or how she was exposed. Your family carries a latent infection, this has been proven by her doctors. The Headmaster needs to prepare you with certain truths. That’s all.” Her big face was flushed, red from neck to hair, and she swayed from one side to the other in her hiking boots, like we were on the deck of a ship.

I stayed quiet and listened to my breath hiss in and out through my nostrils. Proven my behind. There was no reliable test for the necrovirus—half the time someone was committed because someone else didn’t like their look. That much, I had learned from Dr. Portnoy and my dealings with the asylum.

Mrs. Fortune clucked when I was quiet. “Do you have anything to say for yourself, Aoife?”

“I’m not my mother,” I snarled, vicious as the nightjar. I was different than Nerissa. I didn’t want to wander lost in dreams. I had iron and engines in my blood.

“No, dear, we’re not saying anything of the sort, but you must admit that Conrad …,” she started. I glared at her, a hard glare made of tempered glass. Mrs. Fortune swallowed her last words.

“I’m not my brother, either,” I ground out. “Is that what the Headmaster will say? We’re mad because my mother didn’t marry our father? Her being easy made us mad? Well, it’s not true and I’m not mad.” Heat rose in my cheeks like too much steam in a feed pipe. The pressure was going to make me explode.

Mrs. Fortune, for her part, looked relieved to be back on familiar footing. “You will not speak to a head of house so, young woman. Now finish your schoolwork and get into your nightclothes. Lights out in one hour.”

“I’m not going to go mad,” I said again, loudly, as she backed out of the room.

“Oh, Aoife.” Mrs. Fortune sighed. “How can anyone possibly know that for sure?” She smiled sadly and shut the door.

The aether hissed. I felt tears spill over my cheeks and I didn’t wipe them away, just let them grow cold on my skin.

I waited for a good while after Fortune’s footsteps moved away, then grabbed the letter from under my pillow and tore it open with my thumbnail. Three other letters had come in the year since my brother Conrad went away, and I kept the envelopes in my footlocker, underneath my blue sweater with the moth hole in the armpit.

The letters in his handwriting always arrived invisibly, never more than a few lines, but they told me that Conrad was still alive. After his escape from the madhouse, where the Proctors sent him after his sixteenth birthday, it was the only sign I had left. Treated with ghost ink, the letters smelled of vinegar and smoke. Ghost ink had been Conrad’s favorite trick—treat the paper and the ink with the patented Invisible Ghosting Liquid, and when you held the missive over heat and set it aflame, innocuous poems turned into full-length letters written in smoke that would disappear when the paper finally burned down to ash.

If the Headmaster or the Proctors in Ravenhouse, dedicated to protecting us from the heretics and viral creatures, found out I was getting letters from a condemned madman, I’d be locked up as quickly as Conrad had been. I unfolded the thick paper, feeling the fibers coarse against my fingertips, expecting something like the last letter:

Winter comes with sharp teeth

Wind to polish my bones

Which, burned, read:

Dear Aoife ,

Cold here, and snowing, dreary and dark as the Catacombs in Ravenhouse at home …

Conrad never sounded mad in his letters. Then again, to anyone who didn’t know her, my mother didn’t seem particularly mad at first glance. Until she started talking about lily fields and dead girls. You had to look deep, in the cracks and crevices, to see the madness of the infection eating her insides. Once you really looked, though … there was no question it was there. Just like Conrad’s words in smoke.